45 Days to Save the Bad Boy

Fourteen

“Do you think he’s insane?” I asked Peter absently as we were walking down the stairs.  He tried to muffle his laughter.

“That’s funny coming from you.  I think he has a crush.”

I turned my head to face him, surprise crossing my features.  “On me?”

That was ridiculous.  Breton was just dealing with the after-effects of a concussion.  No one has ever had a crush on me.  I wouldn’t know what to do with someone crushing on me.  Any poor boy who dared would learn that “letting them down easy” isn’t in my dictionary, simply because I wouldn’t know what’s “easy”.

“No.  He just kissed you because he was practicing for his crush.”  Peter said all this with a straight face, so I don’t blame myself for not detecting the sarcasm in his voice.

“Oh,” I sighed out, relieved.  “That’s good.  Weird, but I can live with it.”

“You don’t like him?” Peter asked me, looking like he wasn’t going to believe me if I tried to deny it.

“Of course I do.  He’s my best friend.  I just didn’t want him to kiss me,” I explained.

“So... you don’t like him like he liked you,” Peter summed up.

“I don’t know.  How does he like me?”

“Do I have to put this in middle-school-girl-with-a-crush-language?”  I stared at him blankly, not quite sure if I would understand m-s-g-w-a-c-l.  “He like-likes you.”

“Oh.  So, what do I do?”  Peter seemed to know a lot about this sort of thing.

“I don’t know.  Do you like him?” he asked.

“I don’t really know.  How would I be able to tell?” I inquired.

“Let’s start with something simple.  What did you feel when he kissed you?”

“Lips.  Obviously.  Sometimes Peter, I’m just not sure that you should be a senior,” I told him.  He rolled his eyes at me, then thought for a moment.  Apparently that’s not the answer he was looking for.

“Who’s your one friend, the one who pretended to be your boyfriend for a day?”

“Do you mean Dallas?”  I paused in front of the door, not sure where he was going with this.

“Yeah.  I think I’m going to need his help,” Peter said, tugging on my hand to get me to follow him.  “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know!  We were only friends for like, the first week of school, and then I messed everything up!”  I huffed, and tried to tug my hand out of his.  His grip tightened, so I settled for making faces at the back of his head.  

“I guess we’re going to have to go to school tomorrow,” Peter told me.

“I don’t even understand what you just said,” I informed him.  “Why do we need to go to school tomorrow?  No one goes to school on Saturday!”

Peter looked back at me with a smirk.  “You really don’t pay attention, do you?  There’s a bonfire tomorrow night at the school.  So we are going to crash the party and find your little friend.”

Bonfire?  I think I remember hearing something about a bonfire.... maybe.  In the meantime though, what were we supposed to do today?  I repeated my question out loud.

“Well, I’m gonna go next door and talk to my cousin, and you can eat supper and then go to sleep.  Then tomorrow night I’ll come pick you up and we’ll go catch a Dallas!”  The plan was favorable, so we parted ways.